When I first read “Belief in Belief”, I liked it, and agreed with it, but I thought it was describing a curiousity; an exotic specimen of irrationality for us to oooh and aaah over. I mentally applied it to Unitarians and Reform Jews and that was about it.
I’ve since started wondering more and more if it actually describes a majority of religious people. I don’t know if this is how Eliezer intended it, but it was two things that really convinced me:
The first reason was behavior. Most theists I know occasionally deviate from their religious principles; not egregiously, but they’re far from perfect. But when I imagine a world that would make me believe religion with certainty—a world where angels routinely descend to people’s bedsides to carry their souls to Heaven, or where Satan allows National Geographic into Hell to film a documentary—I find it hard to imagine people sleeping in on Sundays. Not even the most hardened criminal will steal when the policeman’s right in front of him and the punishment is infinite.
The second was a webcomic:
http://www.heavingdeadcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/file1126-2.jpg
It wasn’t so much that theists wouldn’t drink the poison as that they’d be surprised, even offended at being asked. It would seem like a cheap trick. Whereas (for example) I would be happy to prove my “faith” in science by ingesting poison after I’d taken an antidote proven to work in clinical trials.
I see two ways this issue is directly important to rationalists:
Is this solely a religious phenomenon, or are our own beliefs vulnerable to this kind of self-deception?
What kind of tests can we create to determine whether a belief is sincerely held?
One thing that makes Christianity such a powerful meme is that it has specifically developed defenses that seem designed to counter this kind of argument. They’re actually written right into the Bible.
Matthew 4:7-
″
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]””
Basically, the exact kind of test you’re talking about, an attempt to falsify the hypothesis that God exists and will protect you, is something that you are explicitly forbidden from trying to do in the Bible. Even the act of suggesting it as a course of action is associated with the Devil.
The fact that Christianity has such well-developed internal defenses against being challenged is one reason it’s been such an effective meme. Also, perhaps more interesting, I would say that the fact that it was felt that they needed to do so proves that even at the time the Bible was written there were rationalists (or at least proto-rationalists) challenging religion on rational grounds, and the early religious leaders felt the need to counter those kinds of arguments.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Mere belief in belief is also, it would seem, not enough.
The problem, I think, is that most people are looking for the quick-fix, easy-button, where they don’t have to actually do anything.
So when they see things like Matthew 17:20
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
They assume that if they just believe hard enough then miracles will happen while they sit on their butts and watch.
But… What would be the necessary consequence of a person’s faith saying that the mountain should be cast into the sea? And of everyone actually, truly believing it?
Would they not leave all other concerns behind? Grab a pick and shovel and set to work leveling the mountain? And if even just a million people all believed in that goal that strongly? How long could even a mountain stand?
But it’s been 2000 years and nothing has changed. Most people don’t believe what they say they do. And not just about religion either. For most people professing belief is just a membership card for a social club. True belief inspires action.
The core of Christianity is that we don’t really need big, oppressive systems of complex rules enforced with an iron fist to make the world a better place. That, in fact, such systems cannot possibly make the world better. We just all need to be helpful and kind to each other and the complexity will take care of itself. The math to prove it has only been developed in the last century or so, and, unfortunately lots of people get distracted by the mystical portions of the religion to the point where if you suggest that there are provable, this-world benefits to believing and acting this way a lot of them will at least look at you like you’re crazy, if not outright denounce you as a heretic.
Which isn’t to say that there are no rules. Even if you don’t believe that God is sapient, it’s still the force that set the moon and stars in their places. That ensures cause always leads to effect. You either align your plans with how it works, or you fail. One-in-a-million miracles happen because we don’t fully understand all the rules. But God is immutable, you can’t change his mind by praying or begging or sacrificing animals. So don’t rely on miracles. Don’t test God by asking for the impossible. Even if you believe he’s sapient—the Game Master of our world if you will—he doesn’t make exceptions to the rules. There has to be a way to accomplish any miracle within them, or it won’t happen.
The Bible is revered, with good reason, for being one of the oldest surviving attempts at explaining all this. But the people who think it’s the only one aren’t looking very hard. And anyone who thinks it’s the best one (on its own, without lots and lots of extra study on the cultural setting and philosophical underpinnings) should be invited to read Shakespeare and see if they manage to pick up on all the dick jokes. The gap between modern culture and the Bible is at least five times that. It’s not a simple, easy read, no matter how good the translation.
I would be happy to prove my “faith” in science by ingesting poison after I’d taken an antidote proven to work in clinical trials.
This is one of the things James Randi is known for. He’ll take a “fatal” dose of homeopathic sleeping pills during talks (e.g. his TED talk) as a way of showing they don’t work.
The belief that overdosing on sleeping pills is fatal comes from barbiturate medications, while modern pills contain benzodiazepines such as diazepam. Modern sleeping pills are pretty easy to get exactly because even if someone downs the whole bottle, they don’t die, only go to deep unconsciousness, i.e. “knockout sleep” (physical stimuli, such as shaking the patient, don’t wake them up) that possibly lasts several days. Thus if James Randi took a fatal-by-barbiturate-standards dose of benzodiazepine sleeping pills, then (after he woke up) he would conclude that the pills didn’t work because he didn’t die.
This is not to say that benzodiazepine pills are completely safe. (This is to be expected from anything that messes with the central nervous system and basic regulation.) Of most practical relevance is the crossreaction with alcohol; combining drunkenness with benzodiazepine overdose is very much fatal. Unfortunately, mild alcohol consumption plus a standard dose can fairly reliably trigger “knockout sleep”, making the combination an easily-used party/rape drug. (If this is a floating belief, keep it as such; a.k.a. do not try this at home.)
No. People can “believe” in non-religious things and yet refuse to make bets which should be 100% safe if their belief is true. Sometimes they don’t realize that the specific bet is related to the abstract belief; but often there are separate magisteria of belief-space and everyday-action-space.
How many believers in democracy would let their own life be decided by a majority vote of other people? How many believers in communism would share all their property with someone poorer than them?
How many believers in democracy would let their own life be decided by a majority vote of other people?
That seems like a strawman. Most western democracies have substantial antimajoritarian components to their basic laws. Procedurally, most countries have judicial review of legislative acts. Substantive examples (from the United States) include the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and the Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures).
In other words, proponents of democratic government don’t intend to communicate that they want every decision made by the majority of the citizens.
Gah, not to persist with the Simulacra discussion, but most religious people (and most people, most of the time, on most topics) are on Simulacra Level 3: beliefs are membership badges. Wingnuts, conspiracy theorists, and rationalists are out on Level 1, taking beliefs at face value.
I’m now thinking the woman mentioned here is on Level 4: she no longer really cares that she’s admitting things that her tribe wouldn’t say, she’s declaring that she’s one of them despite clearly being cynical about the tribal signs.
I find it hard to imagine people sleeping in on Sundays. Not even the most hardened criminal will steal when the policeman’s right in front of him and the punishment is infinite.
I’m a little late on this one but for another clear example is that theists don’t have the relationship with death that you would expect someone to have if they believed that post-death was the good part. “You want me to apologize to the bereaved family for murder? They should be thanking me!”
This was one of the main reasons that I didn’t set much store by the single Sunday school lesson I ever attended (courtesy of my paternal grandmother, against my mother’s wishes, when I was probably older than 5 but definitely younger than 10). When the teacher described to all of us what a wonderful place heaven was, every single one of us (apparently I wasn’t the only one there hearing all this for the first time) was overjoyed, and we all exclaimed that we wanted to die right away so we could go there.
The teacher hurriedly tried to explain to us that that’s not what God wants, he wants us to live full lives here on Earth. We were having none of it. “No!” we said joyfully, “I wanna die right now!”
While we didn’t say it in so many words, it was clear to us that the teacher wasn’t making any sense, since she seemed to be claiming both that God wants what’s best for us, and that God doesn’t want us to do what would clearly actually be best for us. We were in the strange position of watching an adult firmly denounce what should have been the most obviously correct decision in the history of human existence if heaven actually existed.
Claiming that God doesn’t want us to go to heaven right away because he “wants us to live full lives on Earth” makes no sense. If heaven’s really so great, and it’s eternal, then why in the world would literally anybody not want to get there as soon as possible? And more importantly, why would God not want that? If there’s an answer to that, the teacher didn’t know it. And if we’re accepting her claims that heaven is amazing and eternal and God wants what’s best for us, then the only good reason God could have for wanting us to “live full lives on Earth” is that it would maximize our well-being in the long run even after taking an eternity in heaven into account. The teacher offered us no reason to believe that’s the case; and more importantly, neither did God, who was just as silent on that day as on all other days.
The other main reason was that I kept thinking (again, not in so many words), “Wow, if all this is true, it sounds really important for people to know! Maybe the single most important thing a person could ever possibly learn! Why haven’t we all learned this in school yet? Why hasn’t Mom told me? Why isn’t this the sole topic of human conversation? Why hasn’t this vitally important and seemingly well-known information reached my ears before now, even just by sheer chance? Why hasn’t any of this had literally any effect on my life before now?”
And then, as I resumed my Sunday school-less existence, and the supposed truths I’d been told in that classroom continued to have absolutely no effect on my life, or on anybody else’s for that matter, I don’t think there was a point (in childhood, anyway) where I explicitly decided it wasn’t true, but I felt perfectly comfortable acting as though it wasn’t, since reality apparently did not see fit to contradict me.
It’s funny, because there’s a lot to criticize about how my mother raised me, and considering how credulous she can be in other areas of her life, it’s rather interesting that she made a very deliberate decision not to raise me religious — something that even her mother, someone who I never once saw pray or say grace or attend church or act in literally any way like she was even pretending to believe in God, couldn’t wrap her head around. But I’m grateful to her for making that decision.
The standard Christian answer to the question of deliberately going to heaven early is that our presence here on Earth is like being a soldier on duty. The soldier may not leave his post, no matter what happens, until he is stood down by his commanding officer, i.e. God. Suicide is tantamount to desertion, and a sure ticket to hell. Instead he must serve faithfully until that day, whereof no man knoweth the hour, when God says, “thou good and faithful servant, now mayest thou depart in peace.”
I doubt, though, that many Sunday school teachers would be able to present that very well. Their job is really just to provide religious-flavoured childcare, taking the little mites off their parents’ hands for a while.
The standard Christian answer to the question of deliberately going to heaven early is that our presence here on Earth is like being a soldier on duty.
This resolves nothing. In fact it just raises more questions.
When I first read “Belief in Belief”, I liked it, and agreed with it, but I thought it was describing a curiousity; an exotic specimen of irrationality for us to oooh and aaah over. I mentally applied it to Unitarians and Reform Jews and that was about it.
I’ve since started wondering more and more if it actually describes a majority of religious people. I don’t know if this is how Eliezer intended it, but it was two things that really convinced me:
The first reason was behavior. Most theists I know occasionally deviate from their religious principles; not egregiously, but they’re far from perfect. But when I imagine a world that would make me believe religion with certainty—a world where angels routinely descend to people’s bedsides to carry their souls to Heaven, or where Satan allows National Geographic into Hell to film a documentary—I find it hard to imagine people sleeping in on Sundays. Not even the most hardened criminal will steal when the policeman’s right in front of him and the punishment is infinite.
The second was a webcomic: http://www.heavingdeadcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/file1126-2.jpg It wasn’t so much that theists wouldn’t drink the poison as that they’d be surprised, even offended at being asked. It would seem like a cheap trick. Whereas (for example) I would be happy to prove my “faith” in science by ingesting poison after I’d taken an antidote proven to work in clinical trials.
I see two ways this issue is directly important to rationalists:
Is this solely a religious phenomenon, or are our own beliefs vulnerable to this kind of self-deception?
What kind of tests can we create to determine whether a belief is sincerely held?
One thing that makes Christianity such a powerful meme is that it has specifically developed defenses that seem designed to counter this kind of argument. They’re actually written right into the Bible.
Matthew 4:7-
″ 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]””
Basically, the exact kind of test you’re talking about, an attempt to falsify the hypothesis that God exists and will protect you, is something that you are explicitly forbidden from trying to do in the Bible. Even the act of suggesting it as a course of action is associated with the Devil.
The fact that Christianity has such well-developed internal defenses against being challenged is one reason it’s been such an effective meme. Also, perhaps more interesting, I would say that the fact that it was felt that they needed to do so proves that even at the time the Bible was written there were rationalists (or at least proto-rationalists) challenging religion on rational grounds, and the early religious leaders felt the need to counter those kinds of arguments.
And yet, Matthew 7:22-23
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Mere belief in belief is also, it would seem, not enough.
The problem, I think, is that most people are looking for the quick-fix, easy-button, where they don’t have to actually do anything.
So when they see things like Matthew 17:20
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
They assume that if they just believe hard enough then miracles will happen while they sit on their butts and watch.
But… What would be the necessary consequence of a person’s faith saying that the mountain should be cast into the sea? And of everyone actually, truly believing it?
Would they not leave all other concerns behind? Grab a pick and shovel and set to work leveling the mountain? And if even just a million people all believed in that goal that strongly? How long could even a mountain stand?
But it’s been 2000 years and nothing has changed. Most people don’t believe what they say they do. And not just about religion either. For most people professing belief is just a membership card for a social club. True belief inspires action.
The core of Christianity is that we don’t really need big, oppressive systems of complex rules enforced with an iron fist to make the world a better place. That, in fact, such systems cannot possibly make the world better. We just all need to be helpful and kind to each other and the complexity will take care of itself. The math to prove it has only been developed in the last century or so, and, unfortunately lots of people get distracted by the mystical portions of the religion to the point where if you suggest that there are provable, this-world benefits to believing and acting this way a lot of them will at least look at you like you’re crazy, if not outright denounce you as a heretic.
Which isn’t to say that there are no rules. Even if you don’t believe that God is sapient, it’s still the force that set the moon and stars in their places. That ensures cause always leads to effect. You either align your plans with how it works, or you fail. One-in-a-million miracles happen because we don’t fully understand all the rules. But God is immutable, you can’t change his mind by praying or begging or sacrificing animals. So don’t rely on miracles. Don’t test God by asking for the impossible. Even if you believe he’s sapient—the Game Master of our world if you will—he doesn’t make exceptions to the rules. There has to be a way to accomplish any miracle within them, or it won’t happen.
The Bible is revered, with good reason, for being one of the oldest surviving attempts at explaining all this. But the people who think it’s the only one aren’t looking very hard. And anyone who thinks it’s the best one (on its own, without lots and lots of extra study on the cultural setting and philosophical underpinnings) should be invited to read Shakespeare and see if they manage to pick up on all the dick jokes. The gap between modern culture and the Bible is at least five times that. It’s not a simple, easy read, no matter how good the translation.
This is one of the things James Randi is known for. He’ll take a “fatal” dose of homeopathic sleeping pills during talks (e.g. his TED talk) as a way of showing they don’t work.
The belief that overdosing on sleeping pills is fatal comes from barbiturate medications, while modern pills contain benzodiazepines such as diazepam. Modern sleeping pills are pretty easy to get exactly because even if someone downs the whole bottle, they don’t die, only go to deep unconsciousness, i.e. “knockout sleep” (physical stimuli, such as shaking the patient, don’t wake them up) that possibly lasts several days. Thus if James Randi took a fatal-by-barbiturate-standards dose of benzodiazepine sleeping pills, then (after he woke up) he would conclude that the pills didn’t work because he didn’t die.
This is not to say that benzodiazepine pills are completely safe. (This is to be expected from anything that messes with the central nervous system and basic regulation.) Of most practical relevance is the crossreaction with alcohol; combining drunkenness with benzodiazepine overdose is very much fatal. Unfortunately, mild alcohol consumption plus a standard dose can fairly reliably trigger “knockout sleep”, making the combination an easily-used party/rape drug. (If this is a floating belief, keep it as such; a.k.a. do not try this at home.)
No. People can “believe” in non-religious things and yet refuse to make bets which should be 100% safe if their belief is true. Sometimes they don’t realize that the specific bet is related to the abstract belief; but often there are separate magisteria of belief-space and everyday-action-space.
How many believers in democracy would let their own life be decided by a majority vote of other people? How many believers in communism would share all their property with someone poorer than them?
That seems like a strawman. Most western democracies have substantial antimajoritarian components to their basic laws. Procedurally, most countries have judicial review of legislative acts. Substantive examples (from the United States) include the First Amendment (freedom of speech) and the Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures).
In other words, proponents of democratic government don’t intend to communicate that they want every decision made by the majority of the citizens.
But that’s exactly what he’s talking about. People talk big about “democracy” and “majority rule”...
But only when they’re absolutely certain that they’d be in the majority on the issue at hand.
Otherwise they want safeguards to keep their poor, oppressed selves safe from the evil majority.
In other words, they really don’t believe that majoritarian democracy works. Which is a good belief, because it doesn’t.
Gah, not to persist with the Simulacra discussion, but most religious people (and most people, most of the time, on most topics) are on Simulacra Level 3: beliefs are membership badges. Wingnuts, conspiracy theorists, and rationalists are out on Level 1, taking beliefs at face value.
I’m now thinking the woman mentioned here is on Level 4: she no longer really cares that she’s admitting things that her tribe wouldn’t say, she’s declaring that she’s one of them despite clearly being cynical about the tribal signs.
Link is dead. Would very much like to see web-comic. :)
http://i.imgur.com/ttzQV.jpg
Thanks!
I’m a little late on this one but for another clear example is that theists don’t have the relationship with death that you would expect someone to have if they believed that post-death was the good part. “You want me to apologize to the bereaved family for murder? They should be thanking me!”
This was one of the main reasons that I didn’t set much store by the single Sunday school lesson I ever attended (courtesy of my paternal grandmother, against my mother’s wishes, when I was probably older than 5 but definitely younger than 10). When the teacher described to all of us what a wonderful place heaven was, every single one of us (apparently I wasn’t the only one there hearing all this for the first time) was overjoyed, and we all exclaimed that we wanted to die right away so we could go there.
The teacher hurriedly tried to explain to us that that’s not what God wants, he wants us to live full lives here on Earth. We were having none of it. “No!” we said joyfully, “I wanna die right now!”
While we didn’t say it in so many words, it was clear to us that the teacher wasn’t making any sense, since she seemed to be claiming both that God wants what’s best for us, and that God doesn’t want us to do what would clearly actually be best for us. We were in the strange position of watching an adult firmly denounce what should have been the most obviously correct decision in the history of human existence if heaven actually existed.
Claiming that God doesn’t want us to go to heaven right away because he “wants us to live full lives on Earth” makes no sense. If heaven’s really so great, and it’s eternal, then why in the world would literally anybody not want to get there as soon as possible? And more importantly, why would God not want that? If there’s an answer to that, the teacher didn’t know it. And if we’re accepting her claims that heaven is amazing and eternal and God wants what’s best for us, then the only good reason God could have for wanting us to “live full lives on Earth” is that it would maximize our well-being in the long run even after taking an eternity in heaven into account. The teacher offered us no reason to believe that’s the case; and more importantly, neither did God, who was just as silent on that day as on all other days.
The other main reason was that I kept thinking (again, not in so many words), “Wow, if all this is true, it sounds really important for people to know! Maybe the single most important thing a person could ever possibly learn! Why haven’t we all learned this in school yet? Why hasn’t Mom told me? Why isn’t this the sole topic of human conversation? Why hasn’t this vitally important and seemingly well-known information reached my ears before now, even just by sheer chance? Why hasn’t any of this had literally any effect on my life before now?”
And then, as I resumed my Sunday school-less existence, and the supposed truths I’d been told in that classroom continued to have absolutely no effect on my life, or on anybody else’s for that matter, I don’t think there was a point (in childhood, anyway) where I explicitly decided it wasn’t true, but I felt perfectly comfortable acting as though it wasn’t, since reality apparently did not see fit to contradict me.
It’s funny, because there’s a lot to criticize about how my mother raised me, and considering how credulous she can be in other areas of her life, it’s rather interesting that she made a very deliberate decision not to raise me religious — something that even her mother, someone who I never once saw pray or say grace or attend church or act in literally any way like she was even pretending to believe in God, couldn’t wrap her head around. But I’m grateful to her for making that decision.
The standard Christian answer to the question of deliberately going to heaven early is that our presence here on Earth is like being a soldier on duty. The soldier may not leave his post, no matter what happens, until he is stood down by his commanding officer, i.e. God. Suicide is tantamount to desertion, and a sure ticket to hell. Instead he must serve faithfully until that day, whereof no man knoweth the hour, when God says, “thou good and faithful servant, now mayest thou depart in peace.”
I doubt, though, that many Sunday school teachers would be able to present that very well. Their job is really just to provide religious-flavoured childcare, taking the little mites off their parents’ hands for a while.
This resolves nothing. In fact it just raises more questions.